Friday, March 03, 2006

Cardinal Roger Mahoney has achieved the near impossible for his ecclesiastic cohort. He receives approval today in the lead editorial of The New York Times. The Times really likes the courage he has manifested in applying his Christian faith to the civil order by asking priests and others in his archdiocese to refuse obedience to a new highly punitive law on immigrants and those who help them. I am very proud to share in the faith and witness of Cardinal Mahoney. His is a very powerful Christian witness in a time when a frustrated American middle and lower class are targeting immigrants and not the government-corporation entities as the cause of their economic problems. Mahoney's witness on this and on other social issues is a model of how faith should motivate us in the civil world. Good to see the NYT on board with this. Now will they welcome his (or any bishop's) public statements on other issues, like say, abortion? Perhaps in their wisdom the editorial writers will then detect an "imposition of one's values on other." But then that would a shallow and obvious double standard and the NYT would never do that, would they?